Jury: Wash. must pay $6.2 million to foster children

SEATTLE — A King County Superior Court jury ordered the state to pay $6.2 million Tuesday to four siblings who were repeatedly abused in foster care, the latest in a string of legal troubles for the state Department of Social and Health Services.

The jury deliberated for three days following the three-week trial, which focused on whether the state was negligent in licensing and monitoring the Seattle and Tacoma foster homes where the children stayed.

Kathy Goater, an attorney for the children, said that while they stayed at the Seattle home of Pearl Hall from 1993-97, Hall's son sexually abused them. They also were beaten with extension cords, belts and "whatever else was handy," Goater said.

They were sent to another home in Tacoma from 1998-99, and were beaten there as well, she said. The children are now 13 to 19 years old.

"It is deeply regrettable that these children had to suffer abuse in a home that should have been a safe place," DSHS spokeswoman Kathy Spears said. "We did try to resolve this matter prior to trial, but the settlement negotiations did not bring us close enough to resolution."

The state Attorney General's Office is weighing whether to appeal, Spears said.

In 2004, the state agreed to overhaul its foster-care system to settle a case brought by Jessica Braam, who had lived in 34 foster homes by the time she sued in 1998. An oversight panel was assigned to work with DSHS in improving foster parent training and support, preventing unsafe placements and making other changes, but the state has been sued several times in recent years.

Last month, the state agreed to pay $290,000 to settle a lawsuit accusing the state of negligence in the case of an 8-year-old foster child sexually abused at a foster home in Ellensburg in 2002. In April, a multimillion-dollar lawsuit filed in Yakima County blamed state social workers for ignoring warnings that could have avoided abuse that left a 6-year-old girl brain damaged and partially blind.

Goater's co-counsel, Becky Roe, said she had never seen a group of children who so badly slipped through the system's cracks, and she hoped the verdict Tuesday would encourage the state to get its act together when it comes to protecting foster children.

"They are supposed to be monitoring and complying with their own policies, and they weren't," Roe said.

At a news conference, the oldest of the four children, De'Arra Williams, praised her brother Robert, now 16, for running to a supermarket one day in 1998 as Pearl Hall was about to beat him. The police found him there, and a few days later the four were moved to the home in Tacoma — where things didn't turn out much better. Robert was 7 at the time.

"He saved us," De'Arra said. "I think if we'd stayed any longer, worse could have happened. His bravery saved our lives."

As for verdict, she said, "the money's not such a big thing. The fact that this was happening and still is happening should be the priority."